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Douglas M.

Douglas M.

Joined on 05/25/18

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Product Reviews
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product reviews
  • 14
Most Favorable Review

Faster than expected, very happy so far!

Silicon Power Ace A55 2.5" 512GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SU512GBSS3A55S25NE
Silicon Power Ace A55 2.5" 512GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SU512GBSS3A55S25NE

Pros: Benchmarked it on CPUBenchmark dot com last night, got a shockingly high speed rating for it. It's not the very fastest on the market but it's right up there and a heck of a lot cheaper.

Cons: Feels a touch flimsy but how much physical load is an internal SSD expected to handle? Very light weight should mean any perceived flimsiness is more than offset by the very low stresses a light object should encounter in a drop scenario.

Overall Review: I took a gamble and bought this based on price alone. Wanted the cool new M.2 form factor but wasn't willing to give up 2 of my 6 SATA slots for it so went with the standard 2.5" SATA III drive instead. So far I'm absolutely blown away by how speedy it is. Cold boot in Win 10 Pro now just takes a few seconds. My programs run much faster than before. Installation was mindlessly simple and suitable for even a first-time system builder. If it lasts I will definitely make Silicon Power my go-to SSD manufacturer for client systems. Will probably buy another soon for my old laptop; I'm that happy with it.

Most Critical Review

Don't buy any SSD with unrealistic expectations.

Team Group GX2 2.5" 512GB SATA III 3D NAND TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) T253X2512G0C101
Team Group GX2 2.5" 512GB SATA III 3D NAND TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) T253X2512G0C101

Pros: This sucker boots quickly. I just replaced an HDD in the ancient Toshiba single-core Celeron laptop I call "The Craptop", and now it boots in seconds rather than minutes with a sandwich break.

Cons: It's not a fast SSD; it has little buffer memory (if any) and large writes take their sweet time, plus some more, plus union break time. I'm currently copying a 50GB directory of 200,000+ small files and it feels like sucking coffee through a swizzle stick. Individual smaller files go as fast as you'd expect but large transfers take a LONG time. This directory is estimated to finish transferring over hardline Ethernet sometime in the next 48 hours. That's kind of normal for a bargain SSD, and I'm not upset; it's not my first rodeo. But any decent USB 3.0 flash drive will seem lightning-fast in comparison when you're first transferring large amounts of data to this SSD. Compared to the Silicon Power Ace SSD I have in my desktop, this thing's a legless dog chained to a tree.

Overall Review: I won't be buying another of this brand unless the price point is stellar. That said, I don't regret the purchase. Once the bulk of my files are done transferring to The Craptop, I expect the performance will feel snappy once more; if it can boot to desktop in a clean installation of Windows 10 in under 15 seconds it's obviously on par with an average cheap SSD. Individual small-to-midsize file transfers will not take F-O-R-E-V-E-R as the large directory now copying is. Is it dead slow? Nope. Is it fast? NOT ON YOUR LIFE. But when the bulk of transfers is finished...sigh...perhaps in a week...it will access that data a lot quicker than the old HDD could. Until then, though...bog slow. Dead slow. Grass grows faster. Not exaggerating. The slowest HDD I still own - a 60GB EIDE running through a USB 2.0 adapter - trumps this zombie hands-down for overall write speed on large file transfers. As long as you buy it knowing the initial fill will seem like molasses in winter ON PLUTO, you'll probably enjoy how quickly it works in day-to-day usage.

Second purchase of an identical card.

SanDisk 128GB Ultra microSDXC A1 UHS-I/U1 Class 10 Memory Card with Adapter, Speed Up to 100MB/s (SDSQUAR-128G-GN6MA)
SanDisk 128GB Ultra microSDXC A1 UHS-I/U1 Class 10 Memory Card with Adapter, Speed Up to 100MB/s (SDSQUAR-128G-GN6MA)

Pros: It's a good storage value. Compatible with my wife's Fire 10 HD out of the package. Second one works with my own Fire 7.

Cons: My Fire 7 didn't like the way the card was formatted out of the package and needed to reformat it for compatibility.

Overall Review: Simple, painless installation. Tons of space at a good price. Included adapter gives backwards compatibility with many older devices. Shipped fast, arrived intact. No complaints or raves, just a nice card overall. Sandisk is a go-to brand for me.

Decent value, but I urge you to buy a better card instead.

AMD RX460 128-Bit 4GB GDDR5 Graphic Card DirectX12 Video Card GPU PCI Express 3.0 DP/DVI-D/HDMI, Play for LOL, DOTA, COD, War Thunder, Apex, etc
AMD RX460 128-Bit 4GB GDDR5 Graphic Card DirectX12 Video Card GPU PCI Express 3.0 DP/DVI-D/HDMI, Play for LOL, DOTA, COD, War Thunder, Apex, etc

Pros: It works alright. Decent frame rates for online games like World of Warships. Works fine for 1080p video as long as it doesn't have to upscale to a higher-resolution monitor. The fans are quiet.

Cons: Finicky about drivers. AMD's driver updates often don't work 100% correctly with this card. LOTS of coil whine; if you're sensitive to high frequencies, stay far away from this card. This will be replaced as soon as I can justify the expense.

Overall Review: As it states in the title, I have some buyer's remorse on this card purchase. It's alright for the small amount of gaming I do. It displays full HD video (1080p) just fine on my 1080p monitor. The fan noise is never particularly intrusive. The card has MASSIVE coil whine, though! It's a high-frequency nails-on-a-chalkboard experience when the case is open. With the case buttoned up, it's not as bad but still quite noticeable. I would not buy another CORN video card. I wish I had purchased an RX590 or 1050 on the used market instead of this CORN RX560. The ever-present high-pitched ringing sound is like tinnitus. It grates on one's nerves. I'll be retiring this thing and getting a better card as soon as I can reasonably afford the upgrade. Unless you need a hearing aid and don't plan to update drivers, don't select this video card...

A good choice for an older laptop.

SSD SATA3 480GB 2.5-inch Dogfish Internal Hard Drive SSD 3D NAND Solid State Drive SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5 inch 7mm (0.28”) read up to 550MB/s (2.5-SATA III 480GB)
SSD SATA3 480GB 2.5-inch Dogfish Internal Hard Drive SSD 3D NAND Solid State Drive SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5 inch 7mm (0.28”) read up to 550MB/s (2.5-SATA III 480GB)

Pros: 2D NAND memory should prove significantly longer-lasting than TLC or QLC varieties. Good value for enterprise-grade SSD.

Cons: Not a well-known brand. Not the cheapest SSD in-class.

Overall Review: Got this for my wife's old Lenovo ThinkPad when her Seagate HDD began losing sectors and corrupting data. Wanted to get her an SSD with "old" 2D NAND memory, as by most accounts it's got a longer lifespan and better reliability than more modern memory types like TLC or QLC. My wife gets quite upset when her computer has problems, so longevity and reliability are paramount. This Chinese-made drive uses the same "old" technology as the best modern enterprise-grade SSDs at a fraction of the cost per gigabyte, so it got the nod. So far, so good! She's very pleased and it offers good enough performance to make her trusty old laptop feel very snappy indeed. Certainly the single most effective upgrade I could've given it in terms of performance and responsiveness. She's thrilled so I'm happy too!

Great value for a very good drive.

TOSHIBA MG03ACA400 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Hard Drive Bare Drive
TOSHIBA MG03ACA400 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: It's fast. Ahem, F-A-S-T! It's literally 2x faster than the other SATA III drives in my system. Exceptional price/GB ratio too. Oh, did I mention that it's FAST?

Cons: Not the quietest drive in my box. For speed and value like this I surely don't mind! Random seeks are kind of loud but not annoyingly so. Spool-up is slow, as to be expected from an enterprise-class drive.

Overall Review: I'd recommend this to anybody seeking a good deal for a good HDD. I benchmarked this puppy on one of the big bench websites and it (seriously) ranked in the top 1% of all hard drives tested there. I'm sure there are faster HDDs; the cache is a modest 64MB after all. Nonetheless I'm buying another Toshiba soon to replace one of the older HDDs in my system. Bought this one because I couldn't quite afford the Western Digital Black I really wanted and it was a very lucky find. Five eggs seems no exaggeration of how well it performs. I've been using this for about six months now. It's a heck of a great value and has outlasted some Big Name Drive products. It's head movements can be loud at times. I don't care - it's not LOUD, like the whiney HDDs of yore nor is it LOUD like a failing drive. It's blazing fast in real usage. This might be the best HDD I've ever owned.

seller reviews
  • 8

Second purchase of an identical product from this seller.

MicroSDXC card shipped in factory packaging inside a plain manila unpadded envelope. Shipped the same day the order was received. I'll do further business with 3C Expert; they seem a very solid vendor. The only downside is that the package couldn't be tracked. Not much of a downside when it arrived in my hands with Acme levels of speed. Same thing happened with the first order, BTW - wasn't trackable but got here intact and in a hurry.

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Satisfactory

Very fast service.

Haven't installed the item yet, but the seller shipped immediately and it got here well packaged before estimated arrival. For this reason alone I recommend them highly. I have good hopes for the product, but the seller absolutely deserves my recommendation. Thanks, Dogfish!

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Satisfactory

Twice now I've been very impressed.

This seller ships carefully packaged goods which absolutely exceed my expectations. First time was a 4TB Toshiba drive which performs like a wonder. It arrived sooner than expected and was in fact the first part of an entire system order to arrive. The second time was a 3TB "White Label" drive at a LUDICROUSLY LOW price tag. The actual drive got here very quickly and runs dead-nuts quietly and has a pretty fast transfer rate. Exactly what I hoped for to replace an ancient 500GB Seagate. The drive appears to be a Western Digital, the brand I have had the best luck with in 25+ years of use. What do I think of this seller? I'll tell you honestly: I will seek goHardDrive out for my next purchase. I trust the seller and have nothing but good things to say about them. I will recommend them to friends and family alike. goHardDrive can count on another purchase from ME.

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Satisfactory